GoldieBlox balks on female empowerment video, unfortunately just in time for the holidays

This is really too bad. Companies like GoldieBlox — which is building a business around getting girls involved in engineering-related fields via toys — should not be involved in what seems like a very cynical PR campaign.

In case the saga is new to you, the company released a parody of The Beastie Boys song, “Girls”, but didn’t ask permission and leveraged the video as advertising for its products. This caused a big hoopla over whether this amounted to copyright infringement — a very debatable topic that kept reinforcing the name GoldieBlox in everyone’s mind during the lengthy back and forth. There were valid arguments in either direction, but only a judge or jury could really provide the answer.

Today, GoldieBlox took the video down, just in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and tried to make nice with a blog post.

When I got in touch with CEO Debbie Sterling, she didn’t offer too much more, but said “There was no intention whatsoever for this campaign to be some kind of marketing ploy,” she said. “We are actively seeking a peaceful settlement with The Beastie Boys.”

But now, unfortunately, we’ve muddled an important issue. I’ll bet if I took away Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg, you’d have to take a minute to come up with a powerful female executive in Silicon Valley. I had coffee with a female developer yesterday and she relayed a story where recently a guy in a cafe had treated her and a friend like unicorns when he learned they could write code.

We need companies like GoldieBlox (though some ladies take issue). We need the female mind involved in Silicon Valley. The apps and Web services produced are largely spawned from the wants and needs of men and that does not represent the bigger picture. This is one of those topics that has gotten such play it’s become trite to bring up — but it shouldn’t. Every effort should be made to get women involved in science, math and engineering fields.

Sterling could not comment on the legal haggling between her and The Beastie Boys in any detail. But unfortunately this does look like a PR ploy. If there were concerns about the legal firepower coming out of the music industry, why wouldn’t they have taken the video down when they first heard from the lawyers? Waiting until the video had basically run its PR course on the viral circuit doesn’t look good.

And why file a declaratory judgement, as GoldieBlox did — unless you’re well aware you’re poking the bear? And in this day and age, it seems pretty implausible to parody a famous song and not consider the ramifications beforehand.

And here’s the other thing: “Girls” is a sexist song. Later in life the Beasties made amends for their chauvinism and homophobia and became one of the most socially active groups in music. But when “License to Ill” came out, they were punks. The statement GoldieBlox said they were making was important.

Only copyright hawks (and ardent Beastie Boys fans) were arguing against GoldieBlox yesterday. There are very valid points to be made about Silicon Valley entitlement, but most people — the general public who buys toys — would have been happy to support GoldieBlox in an infringement suit (against that dastardly music industry!) for a transformative work that was trying to right a previous wrong. It’s not like this ad was for BP.

And all this is conflicting because we need products that get girls into STEM fields. Instead of reinforcing old stereotypes with pink things this holiday season, we should be buying science, math and engineering related toys for young women, at least to just let them try it out.

I do think it’s fair to give Sterling the last word. When we talked on the phone she sounded both exhausted and sad. People do make mistakes and only a very short while ago was she funding the whole idea with a Kickstarter campaign.

“Our intentions are good,” Sterling said. “We just really want GoldieBlox to stand for a brand that empowers girls. We want to be good role models.”